We live on a twenty-two-acre portion of an old farm nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina. Our property has acres of woods and acres of open meadows where cows grazed, and hay was harvested. I keep those meadows mowed. It takes about six hours on a small tractor to mow all of them and I do that at least twice each month. Six hours sitting on a tractor, wearing sound-muffling-headphones, is a great time to think. It is actually one of my new revision tools and a great time for reflection. When I am writing and hit a wall, I start the tractor and mow and think. When something is troubling me, I mow and think.
Recently I was obsessed with the words: critic, criticize, criticism, and critique. I was rolling them around in my mind noticing their similarities and reflecting on how we interpret them. It seems that we are in a time when critics are present at every corner and on every tweet and post. News outlets and social media seem to thrive on criticism. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find all that negativity draining, and it has me thinking.
Some may argue it is only semantics, but I believe we feel the difference between criticism and critique. In my mind, criticism almost always comes from a negative place. Criticism lifts up what is wrong, incorrect, missing; all the negatives. Criticism seems to delight in finding flaws and flaunting them. You aren’t likely to want to help if someone says: “Just stop, that’s not how you load the dishwasher. You don’t put the plates in like that. Good grief.” Negativity never helps me move forward, improve, or make change. In fact, I find my reaction to negativity is quite the opposite. Negativity most often leads me to pull back, to withdraw, to avoid.
I view critique, on the other hand, as coming from a positive place. Critique is what my editor offers when we have a conference to talk about one of my projects. She points out the strong parts of the manuscript, she lifts up what is working well, she speaks to those places where the language “sings”, where the characters and the dialog move the plot along, and points where the story “shines.” Then, within the context of that safety net of support, she draws a tight focus on a couple of places that are not working as well. Any attention to negatives is presented within the context of what is working, and she shows how the negative bit she chooses to highlight is detracting from all that is working well.
If you are thinking this is some sort of coddling or ego management, then so be it. I’d rather think of it as guidance. Within the context of what is working well, the negative can be seen more clearly, more objectively. That is to say when negatives are presented in this way, I am able to see more clearly why something isn’t working and how it detracts from the story I’m trying to tell. Critique helps me to understand what I do well, what I have under control and gives me a window into where, how, and why I can improve. I find that critique, when defined this way, actually makes me a better writer. The next draft is tighter because I can reflect on what is working as I address what is not. Because I understand the intentions of my editor, I am energized to jump back into the work knowing exactly where to focus my attention.
From this perspective, critique is an act of caring. It requires that you reflect on what works in addition to what doesn’t. It requires that you consider your comments within a context, to pause and recognize that something isn’t “wrong” simply because it isn’t the way you would do it (e.g. loading the dishwasher). It asks you to consider whether your suggestion is coming from a place of support and potential for growth. Critique is the positive energy of a critic.
Of course, this line of thought took me to school. It gave me pause and nudged me to examine interactions with both students and teachers. It is easy to notice the flaws, to see what is not working. It is easy to point those out. But, is it helpful? Is criticism beneficial to our students or our colleagues? I don’t think so, especially when criticism is coming from a negative place.
I find that criticism most often becomes a default mode when we are operating under stress. I believe most of you will agree that this has been one of the most stressful periods in our memory for our schools, our teachers, our students, and their families. When we are stressed, we are less likely to think clearly, less likely to consider the impact of our intentions, and less likely to think through how our feedback may impede or facilitate growth and positive change. With that in mind I invite you to pause and reflect the feedback you give your students when offering suggestions for growth.
“The kids who can’t read the grade level text listen to it so they are on the same page as students who can read the text. That’s the only way I can have every student experience the required text.” This explanation illustrates how a sixth-grade teacher coped with a one-novel per semester curriculum in her classes. None of the teacher’s three ELA sections had all students reading on grade level or above. In fact, in this school students in all ELA classes, excluding two gifted and talented classes, were reading from grades one to seven —a range that’s similar to many middle schools throughout the country.
Despite the fact that teachers have classroom libraries and students read self-selected books for fifteen minutes each day, students reading three or more years below grade level don’t make enough progress in one year to learn from social studies and science textbooks. In fact, these developing readers, often feel discouraged throughout the day because they can’t read texts in content subjects and therefore, don’t fully participate in discussions.
More than forty years ago in his article, “If They Don’t Read Much, How Are They Ever Gonna Get Good?” Richard Allington affirmed my observations and beliefs for developing readers: to improve their fluency and comprehension as well as enlarge their vocabulary and background knowledge, they need to read engaging, authentic materials throughout the day (1977). Middle school is, most likely, the last opportunity teachers have to meet the needs of developing readers and by eighth grade have most students reading on or above grade level.
When ELA and content area classes have books that represent students’ interests, cultures, and reading levels, students can read all day, every day. Equally important, as they improve reading skill and successfully participate in class discussions, students develop self-confidence and the perseverance to improve their reading. In addition to volume in reading, developing readers benefit from short, guided practice lessons that can also improve reading skill.
The Why Behind Guided Practice
Guided practice is instructional reading using a poem or a short text, and you facilitate the lessons that can be completed in 15 to 30 minutes. If you’re unsure whether students have absorbed information from a series of mini-lessons, you can use guided practice lessons to gain insights into their level of understanding. Moreover, during mini-lessons, you might identify a group of students who require additional practice. By supporting students with guided practice lessons, you strengthen their fluency, word knowledge, writing about reading, increase their background knowledge, and improve their recall and comprehension. How students navigate short texts can inform your instructional decisions, as you can:
Adjust instructional moves by re-teaching a lesson or tweaking students’ goals and workload.
Present one or two additional guided practice lessons to provide students with the practice that can improve their reading skill.
Confer with a student to deepen your understanding of his/her work.
Support a student or small groups by asking them to explain their thinking and then think aloud to model your process and gradually release the responsibility to students.
Pair-up students and ask them to support one another as they rethink and redo notebook writing.
By observing students during guided practice lessons, you can target interventions and bring all students to a level of understanding that allows them to experience success during instructional and independent reading.
Scheduling Guided Practice
Guided practice Lessons replace all or part of your instructional reading block over two to three consecutive days. You can reserve one week to present a lesson and use it to assess students, or you can set aside three to four weeks and use the guided practice lessons as interventions that boost students’ reading skill. Guided practice does not occur all year long and daily formative assessments provide the data that informs decisions and schedule adjustments. I have developed two types of guided practice lessons for additional reading practice.
Two Types of Guided Practice Lessons That Work
Both types of lessons build vocabulary, recommend short videos to enlarge background knowledge, invite students to reread passages for different purposes, improve fluency, and provide practice with citing text evidence to infer and support a position.
Partner discussion lessons ask you to do more explicit teaching by modeling how to write notebook responses and use context to determine the meaning of words. Pairs collaborate to complete word work, discuss questions, and choose a prompt to write about in their notebooks. These lessons offer students practice in completing authentic reading tasks and rely on partners scaffolding tasks for each other.
Shared reading lessons invite students to solve reading challenges independently (Burkins and Yaris, 2018). These lessons ask you to select texts that allow students to solve reading problems independently. As you pose questions about a short text, you’ll drive students into the text to infer, explore themes, compare and contrast, and enlarge their vocabulary. It’s the students doing the work that develops stamina and confidence to enjoy independent reading at school and home..
After students have completed a guided practice lesson, take some time to reflect on your observations and students’ questions and responses. Doing this can help you decide if all or some students need extra practice with a specific strategy or if you can move on to building students’ reading skill and independence.
Learn More About Guided Practice Lessons
Corwin Literacy has published a book by Laura Robb and David Harrison, Guided Practice For Reading Growth (2020) that includes partner discussion and shared reading lessons for twelve poems and twelve short texts written by David Harrison, so children practice using beautifully written and engaging texts. Below is a shared reading lesson from the book that you can use with your students.
Rain, She by David Harrison
Rain, she watch jungle. Oh yes! Rain, she slyly lift each leaf,
tiptoe down trunk of kapok tree,
make sure jungle nice and green.
2Rain, she know when jungle thirsty.
She bang on forest roof, plunk rubber trees on their heads.
“Wake up! Drink!” she say.
Oh yes! Rain, she plump up blossoms, make them nice and fancy for thirsty bees.
3Rain, she not forget animals! Oh no! She drench fur of sullen jaguar,
make parrots shake their feathers,
drip off howler monkey’s nose.
Oh yes!
4And rain, she never never forget to pelt and rattle thatch huts, drip through cracks, trickle down walls.
“Ha!” she say. “This I do for you. I keep river full, she happy, I pour your squash a drink.”
5Then rain, she say, “This I do for me. I keep jungle nice and green.
Oh yes!”
SHARED READING OF THE POEM, “RAIN, SHE”
Purpose: To understand how personification and onomatopoeia enhance meaning and support visualizing
Lesson Materials:
Copies for all students of “Rain, She”
Students file folders for storing short texts; 4 x 6 index card for covering stanzas
An anchor chart headed with the title of the poem. Post both sentences on anchor chart: Personification is giving non-living things the ability to do what humans can do. David Harrison personifies rain by making it a woman who cares for the rainforest.
Make two columns on the anchor chart. Title left side “Strong Rain Verbs” and title right side, “What You Picture.”
Video: “Rain Forests 101/National Geographic” (3:41) or another video about rain forests that’s appropriate for your students. https://youtu.be/3vijLre760w >
Part 1. Pre-Teach
Day 1: about 15-20 minutes
Watch video “Rainforests 101/National Geographic.” (You might want to watch this twice). Invite students to share all they remember. Discuss green canopy and ecosystems.
● Show photo of the Kapok tree. Have students look at the person compared to the size of the tree. Connect Kapok tree to the green canopy and point out the animals that live in the tree and connect that to ecosystems. A great online resource can be found here: https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/species/kapok-tree
Ask students to head a page in their notebooks and explain what the “green canopy” of the rainforest is and why it’s important. Circulate and help students by answering questions or helping them frame responses.
Read the sentences on the anchor chart for personification and personifies. Model how you use clues to figure out the meaning of personification. Invite students to explain personifies using sentence clues.
Have students turn-and-talk and discuss the meaning of these words using context clues.
Reread the title and ask students to explain how David Harrison personifies rain.
Reread the poem and ask students to turn-and-talk and find other examples of rain being personified as a woman.
Introduce onomatopoeia and explain that words that also create sounds are onomatopoeic words. As an example point to bang in the second stanza. Ask, What kind of noise does bang make?
Have students find other words in the poem that also make sounds: plunk, shake, pelt, rattle
Part 2. Start the Shared Reading Lesson
Day 3: about 20-30 minutes
Have students retrieve a copy of “Rain, She” and the 4 x 6 index card from their folders. Students use their index cards to cover up stanzas 3 to 5.
Read stanzas 1 and 2 out loud. As students follow silently, have them spot words that show what “she” does.
Have students turn-and-talk, share words, and write these on the left side of the anchor chart.
First and Second Stanzas
How do these words (watch, tiptoe, bang, plunk, drink, plump up) help you see and hear what she is doing? Tell students these are strong verbs because they paint pictures and create sounds.
What other words in stanzas one and two relate to water?
Read aloud the rest of the poem and students read silently.
Third Stanza
What does she do for animals? What words show you this?
Which words are onomatopoeic words?
Fourth Stanza
How are people in the huts feeling about “rain, she?” Use details from the poem to support you ideas.
How does the rain help people?
Last Stanza
Why does rain say, “This I do for me.” How do these words link to what the poet is saying about rain in the rainforest?
What affect does repeating “oh yes!” have on your feelings? On the poem’s meaning?
Reread each stanza. Turn-and talk about the picture you see in your mind and the words and phrases that helped create these. Share with the class.
Wrap-Up: Notice what students did well: finding strong verbs, onomatopoeic words, visualizing, and offering text details.
Day 4: about 15 minutes
Part 3. Teacher Assesses
Complete the Anchor Chart
Additions and adjustments come from the students. You’ll want to see what they can add. If they add little, then students are telling you they require more practice. You can redo part of the lesson or move on and slow down, checking frequently for understanding.
Have students retrieve the poem from their folders.
Ask students to choral read as you reread the poem.
Review anchor chart notes and have students make adjustments and add ideas.
Review green canopy, kapok tree, personification, and personify and connect to the poem.
Reflect and Intervene: On sticky notes, jot the names of students who didn’t participate or contribute ideas for the anchor chart. Work with individuals or a small group. Return to modeling and then invite students to respond.
References
Allington, Richard L. (1977). “If they don’t read much, how are they ever gonna get good?”Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy. 21(1), 57-61.
Burkins, Jan and Kim Yaris (2018). Who’s doing the work? How to say less so readers can do more. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Miller, Donalyn and Colby Sharp (2018). Game changer! Book access for all kids. New York, NY: Scholastic.
Robb, Laura (2020). Guided Practice for Reading Growth, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Literacy.
Anyone who has followed my work in the past knows that I am a huge advocate for the use of poetry (and song) in the literacy classroom for all students, but especially for younger readers and older readers who struggle. I’d like to share reasons why I think poetry should be an essential part of any literacy program.
Poetry is Joyous
Perhaps the most important reason for the use of poetry is that it is pure joy to read and perform. So many of today’s children’s poets write with such great humor that children are certain to find great delight. Poetry is fun reading!
Poetry is Profound
Beyond its ability to tickle a funny bone or two, poetry can be deeply profound and help build students’ knowledge of the world they live in. Whether it is David L. Harrison’s Rhymes for the Times that tell the story of America through poetry, Catherine Clinton’sI, Too, Sing America: Three Centuries of African American Poetry, Glen Alberto Salazar’s A Little Book of Persian Poetry, or Brod Bagert’s heart of science poetry, poetry can expand children’s world and stretch their imaginations.
Poetry Builds the Foundation for Reading
Research tells us that many children struggle in reading because of they are not fully proficient in the foundational aspects of reading. Poetry is immensely suited to improve many foundational reading competencies.
Phonemic Awareness
Poetry is filled with texts that play with sounds. Think of all the nursery rhymes children should learn before starting school. Diddle Diddle Dumpling, Dickery Dickery Dare, Peter Piper, picked a peck, or Betty Botter Bought some Butter are sure to help children develop an awareness of the phonemes /d/, /p/, and /b/. I can’t help but wonder if nursery rhymes were first created to help children develop their awareness of speech sounds that is crucial to their language and literacy development.
Phonics
Most poems for children rhyme. Rhyming words are words usually (not always) have similar rimes (e.g. the -ake in bake, cake, rake, take…). Helping children detect and decode rimes are a great way to develop their phonics or word decoding ability (as well as their spelling or encoding). Dr. Edward Fry, for example, found that knowledge of just 38 common rimes could help children decode over 600 words simply by adding beginning consonant, consonant blend, or digraph. Little Bo Peep is a perfect text to explore the -eep rime, and Maya Angelou’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me at All is certain to help children learn about the -all rime (and much more!).
Vocabulary
Poetry is filled with rich words that poets use to weave their magic. Back to the Maya Angelou poem we can find wonderful words and phrases such as frighten, frogs and snakes, dragons, counterpane, tough guys, and much much more. Our job as teachers is simply to help children notice these great words that poets make such great use of.
Fluency
Fluency is developed largely through repeated readings of texts. Another name for repeated reading is rehearsal. Poetry is meant to be performed, so in order to get the point where students are able to perform, they will need to rehearse, hopefully under the guidance and support of a teacher. Moreover, the aim of the repeated reading is to read with good expression (prosody), which is at the heart of fluency, instead of reading fast which is the goal of too many repeated reading lessons.
Sight Vocabulary
The rhythm, rhyme (and melody) in poetry, and songs makes them easily memorized. How many of us can remember a poem that we first learned and last read in our school days? Sight words are essentially words that are memorized by sight and sound. Poetry is excellent text for helping students expand their corpus of memorized words – sight vocabulary, especially when after reading (and performing) an entire poem we work with students to analyze individual words and word patterns in the poem itself.
Writing
Because poetry often has a specific and transparent structure, it is an excellent mentor text for students’ writing. It is not difficult for students to write their own versions (or parodies) of favorite poems or songs, whether it is their own versions of Yankee Doodle, Judith Viorst’s If I were in Charge of the World, or Langston Hughes’ Mother to Son the structure of the poetic text gives students a head start on creating their own poetry. A favorite for many students in our university reading clinic:
Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John,
Went to bed with his stockings on.
One shoe off, one shoe on.
Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son John.
That rhyme is also a favorite for students writing their own. Taylor, for example, wrote (rehearsed and performed) his own version of the rhyme:
Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son Fred,
Slept all day on his bed.
Woke up at midnight and screamed “there’s a monster under my bed.”
Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son Fred.
Success – A Sense of Accomplishment
Children who struggle in reading do not often experience success in their reading, especially when they compare themselves with their more proficient classmates. Poems are relatively short, and the rhythm and rhyme embedded in poetry for children make them easy to learn to read and perform. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment children can feel when they are able to fluently and expressively read a poem aloud, just as well as any more proficient reader, to classmates, teacher, family members, and others. That success is empowering. In our reading clinic, our goal is for children to leave every single day with the ability to read something well and to read and perform it for their parents and other family members.
Make Poetry Part of your Reading Curriculum
In our educational world where stories and informational texts are the dominant forms of reading, we need to make a concerted effort to allow poetry a foothold. Just 10-20 minutes of poetry reading a day can have a profound effect on children’s literacy development. Poetry is particularly well suited for remote and virtual instruction. Poems can easily be sent electronically to students and printed at home. Then, via zoom or other distance technology, teachers and children can easily practice, master, and perform a daily poem in that 10-20 time span. Let’s make it a goal for poetry to be read, rehearsed, and performed every day of the school year!
“Run often and fast, toward or away from something. Trust yourself to know which. And trust yourself to know when by the chanting clocks that hang on walls of dreams. This is called wise and this is called brave.”
—Rebecca Kai Dotlich, The Knowing Book, 2016
We are living in times of great uncertainty. The truth is, we always are. And, sometimes, it can be hard to see the forest from the trees.
Ask yourself: What is it I really want for kids? You will likely have various ideas that pop into your mind—yet they all circle back to one key truth: I want them to grow and learn with joy and curiosity. Always.
And while you can’t predict the future, you can “run often and fast” toward four cornerstones—four core values that can keep student progress and wellbeing at the center of all that you do.
1. It’s All about Relationships
This is THE cornerstone upon which everything else that we do stands. It is vital that we build genuine relationships with our students, centered on open dialogue (which includes active listening!), relational trust, and mutual respect.
Always remember that kids are people, too. Showing students respect means you see them as the unique, incredible human beings that they are, and you treat them as such. Through showing genuine respect, trust is developed—and trust opens the door to building strong relationships.
Of course, it is important not to misconstrue compliance with respect. According to Oxford English Dictionary, respect is “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.” Indeed, respect is earned.
In 1975, Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of Psychology, coined the term “warm demander.” In her work and research, she found that teachers need to be high in both “active demandingness” and “personal warmth.” It must not be either/or—we need both. We must earn the right to demand effort. Only once our students know that we legitimately care for them, can we then push them to high expectations—because they know the push is us looking out for them and truly wanting them to soar.
2. Amplify Inquiry
Inquiry can serve as the cornerstone to the stance and spirit that lives in our classrooms. When you start from a place of inquiry, you send a powerful message to your students: I am a learner, too. You are not a “sage on the stage,” rather you are there to explore questions with them. You are there to build and grow new ideas together. Through this inquiry stance, you model and honor questioning and learning more than knowing.
Rather than teaching students about argument writing, about multiplication, about laws of motion, or about the Cold War, how might you instead provide purposeful questions and inquiries for them to explore in order to develop the understandings for themselves? When we make our own meaning, lasting learning occurs. That’s the beautiful “stickiness factor” that comes with inquiry.
Of course, this does not mean that your teaching expertise is no longer needed. Quite the opposite, actually. Great teachers are essential. It is vital that you serve as a lead learner to support students as they grow. In addition, it is important that you are there to give explicit instruction as needed. Contrary to popular belief, explicit teaching definitely has a place within inquiry-based learning. The power lies in the how and why of this instruction. As the International Baccalaureate Organization says in PYP: From Principles into Practice (2018): “In an inquiry classroom, explicit teaching occurs ‘just in time’ (Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, Chinn 2007) not ‘just in case.’”
“Just in time, not just in case” can echo as a mantra in your teaching practice. Prioritize time for kids to live the work. Be careful not to over scaffold. Open up space for your students to intellectually grapple, think critically and creatively, and problem solve—while also being there to give “just in time” instruction and feedback to feedforward.
3. Honor Agency
The International Baccalaureate Organization defines agency as choice, voice, and ownership. While we all have agency within us, whether or not we can utilize our agency often depends on whether our environments respect, value, and support it.
Harnessing agency, then, is about empowerment. As you design learning experiences and cultivate a classroom culture, ask yourself: What am I doing to provide students with opportunities to be authors of their own learning?
In the world of education, we often refer to classroom management. However, rather than management, I encourage you to think of it as classroom empowerment. After all, teaching is not about being in control; it’s about providing an environment where students can cultivate their own autonomy, agency, and self-control. Too often, we adults lament that we want kids and teens to “take responsibility”—but are we opening up responsibility for the taking?
When you think of so-called classroom management, often what you are really after is engagement, attention, and motivation. This is all the more reason to lean into honoring agency.
In fact, both neuroscientists and psychologists have found that attention, motivation, and agency are inextricably linked. For example, cognitive neuroscientists Mike Esterman and Joe DeGutis spent years at the Boston Attention and Learning Lab developing a standard test to measure how well people can focus. They found that extra motivation had an astounding effect: it increased sustained attention by more than fifty percent. Knowing motivation is that powerful, how might we help our kids get more of it? Well, for decades, Edward Deci has been studying motivation, and he has found that one of the greatest factors is autonomy.
As humans, we crave positive emotions. Feelings of boredom, stress, and/or helplessness grind learning to a halt. On the other hand, when we are entrusted to make our own choices and design our own goals and challenges, we are empowered. Motivation, focus, and learning soar.
We all want our students to develop skills for deep thinking and living a life filled with growth and learning. In order for this to happen, we have to give them opportunities to try new things, take risks, get a little messy, and learn from it all. That cannot happen in a tight vacuum of control, but it can flourish in an environment filled with trust and agency.
4. A Forever Stance
“Searching for meaning is the purpose of learning, so teaching for meaning is the purpose of teaching. If teachers do not have meaning making at the core of their pedagogy and practice, then let’s not call the activity teaching. Doing so demeans the word and the noble art and science it represents.”
—Jacqueline Grennon Brooks, “To See Beyond the Lesson,” Educational Leadership, 2004
It is crucial that we take a forever stance in our teaching and learning. We are not here to assign; we are here to teach.
Students must know, feel, and experience the truth that learning does not happen in isolation. As they learn and make their own meaning, they continually add knowledge, skills, and experiences to their repertoires. They think across, between, and beyond individual lessons, disciplines, days, months, and years.
Words matter. Whether teaching a whole group lesson, working with a small group, or conferring one on one, be intentional in communicating a forever stance. You can remind your students that anytime they are reading, painting, writing, listening, researching—or whatever the skill may be—they can choose to pull on this strategy that is now a part of their own, unique repertoires.
As you live out your forever stance, your students will, too. They will recognize that learning is lifelong and lessons are transferable.
About Tonya
Tonya Gilchrist is an internationally experienced educator, instructional coach, and curriculum specialist. Tonya earned her Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Hong Kong University. She also holds an IB Certificate in Leadership Practice and an IB Advanced Certificate in Leadership Research. Tonya currently serves as a senior strategist for Erin Kent Consulting where she specializes in helping schools around the world amplify inquiry and honor agency across all components of balanced literacy—including readers’ and writers’ workshops. She also works with schools to support them in enhancing disciplinary literacy and in effectively utilizing translanguaging practices. You can connect with Tonya on Twitter at @mrs_gilchrist and via her blog at tonyagilchrist.com.
